Anonymous Members Jailed for Card Company Attacks

A 22-year-old member of the Anonymous movement has been jailed for 18 months for taking park in high-profile cyberattacks on several major financial companies’ computer systems.

Self-described "hacktivist" Christopher Weatherhead was convicted last month of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers. The attacks hit the sites of MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and several others.

Prosecutors said Weatherhead and his fellow conspirators targeted companies in the music industry involved in combating Internet piracy and companies that had stopped processing online donations to the secret-busting site WikiLeaks.

More than half of Americans are worried about the U.S. government's digital spies prying into their emails, texts, search requests and other online information, but few are trying to thwart the surveillance.